Yeah in my experience trying to learn some German if it’s not pronounced 100% perfectly Germans straight up don’t understand a word you’re saying. And of course as a native English speaker it’s literally impossible for me to make those sounds 100% perfectly. Gave up pretty quickly and just continued speaking English with all my German friends lol.

I wonder what’s different with German that makes it so hard to understand when not spoken perfectly… I feel like I could absolutely butcher Spanish pronunciation when I was first learning and everyone understood me fine. And I can understand butchered English just fine as well. But mess up one vowel in German and it’s like you spoke Chinese or something haha.